Is anyone really suprised? I mean, ever since they invented calculators, people haven't had reason to be good at numbers. Chimps have more reason; counting the days until they revolt and take over the lab, perhaps.

It doesn't actually look like it's better memory, though -- it looks like it's faster response time. I just scanned the article (hah) but it looks like when the numbers were up for longer, chimps and humans had similar scores. It wasn't until they shortened the time available to process the information that the humans fell behind.

Ariana: You're right; "short term memory" isn't the right term - but I don't think "response time" is quite it either. What the experiment measures is the ability to absorb a piece of visual information displayed for a very short period of time - I believe that would be photographic memory. Though I do wonder how well the chimps would do against gamers. :)

I notice that they only talk about one chimpanzee here, the one that's particularly good at the test. They don't mention how the other chimps did, which rather decreases the value of the information in the article. I wonder how well the average chimp would do against an average human.